Lifelong supports I learned from jazz masters beyond music

11:17 AM,
Dec. 26, 2013

Written by

Nat Hentoff

Two of my main passions - in work as well as in the rest of my life - are jazz and the Constitution, which interact. Jazz, banned by Hitler and Stalin, is America's great contribution of free expression globally, and, as Supreme Court Justice William Brennan once told me, "The First Amendment's freedom of speech protects all the rest of our liberties."

I've been writing about jazz for more than 60 years, while getting to know many of the musicians personally. One of them, Ben Webster, was Duke Ellington's powerfully swinging tenor saxophonist and also a romantically tender balladeer. After he ...